Buffalo Robe: A Sacred Ritual

By Kimberly Hunter

Sacred.

I know what the word means to me. I live it every moment of every day.Sacred is weaved into every single thing I do.

And.
It means different things to different people.

The following piece carries fragments of what happened to me during a sacred ceremony. And when approached by Courtney with, “We want to publish this piece for the website launch.” I recoiled in fear. “We don’t speak of such things. They are Sacred.” repeated in my head. “Sellout”, whispered another. The stoic faces of my Elders surrounding me. In that moment I wrote it, yes it was more than okay.

Amongst a tribe of beautiful people who I had spilled all my most painful moments in all their glory to, it was a fuck yes. They have seen my most naked and vulnerable parts. To trust them with this raw piece of my HumanSoul moment was not a question.

An afternoon at my kitchen sink, doing a seemingly mundane task: Washing dishes.
Spirits of Grandmothers past surrounded me, and said the words:
They need to know the power of our people. It’s been hidden too long. Your story will illuminate this.

We Are Still Here.
And so it is.

My Truth in this Moment

Rambling, rambling Truth within this moment of mine.
Raw, yet filled, from a day of Witnessing and Serving others in a space of healing.
A glass of red wine in my grasp.

Children all around.
Beloved beside me.
Muse nudging (roaring).

I would…Leave it all behindLeave what?This world.

I play by the rules to appease who? I don’t know.
I enroll my kids in school because its what You do.
It feels like I am sending them to the line of the slaughterhouse.

Waiting To BeSacrificed.

For what? For who?

Who the Fuck made these rules and why am I blindly following them?
Fuck.
I don’t even know. . .

I truly feel I’ve wrapped myself in the Wild. And I live, love, breathe and play here the best I can despite it all. Like the buffalo robe my medicine man placed around meOh, that moment.

In the middle of the healing circle.They told me they were going to give me the heart of the Buffalo because I was going to need it on my Path as a Healer in this world.
Spirits around me.
Gourds shaking.
Tiny blue lights flashing.

So many lights I shall number them Infinite.

Their larger than life hands touching me, 4 times the size of mine.
It felt like sateen velvet on my face and hair with so much Love and Reverence pouring forth from them.

The kind of love and wisdom that comes from a grandmother and a grandfather who’ve seen it all and done it all. Who sees your struggle and just loves you through it because they know there’s an end…even if we can’t see it yet.

Is that a t h i c k enough description for you? Can you conjure this feeling with my words?

If I told you the skies open up during Ceremony inside that blackened home with a roof and windows and doors and it rains and thunders and lightning flashes would you believe me?

I sat there wet and forever changed from the rain when it was over…

If I told you in that sacred healing circle I’d felt, heard, and smelled a herd of buffalo running by me through that room in that blackened home with a roof and windows and doors, would you believe me?

I’m not supposed to talk about what happens in our ceremonies.It’s Sacred.
Yet I cannot stop my fingers in this moment, so I won’t.

Buffalo robe around my shoulders, cocooned. I can still smell him. The tanned hide. The blood and the bones and the dirt. The fur that saw thousands of drops of rain, and flakes of snow. The fur that withstood the 114 degree heat of our sun beating down that day, the crisp and tasty air of fall just after the first freeze, and the fur that drank in the moonlight upon the grasses of his home…

I was wrapped in his embrace.

My wild…
Feels like that buffalo robe in this moment.

The physical confirmation of Spirit in our midst with their gourds and hands and lights.
Paired with
The so fucking 3 dimensional presence of the buffalo robe wrapped around my shoulders.
And if this is my wild in this moment…
How do I bestow this Grace upon my children?how how how.

Do they have to go 40 years before they find it, through the round of the slaughterhouse and then maybe hopefully redemption within the field where the buffalo are, if they can overcome the trauma of American Life on Earth?

If I were to run away in this moment,I would Leave everything behind except my beloved and my children and the clothes upon our backs.

Ghosts who disappear into the night To reclaim their field of Wild Where the Buffalo, Wolves, & Eagles and other wild things dwell. because that’s where we belong. who would I be?

I am a modern day Oracle, Seer, & Shaman. I spend my days guiding my 7 children with my Beloved, invoking my inner wild woman, and saving the world;
one Heart at a time.I am currently reconvening with my soul tribe; the Wild Heart Writers group. Baring my heart with words, & rising in Love with them. I am also holding the delicate gossamer strands of my first memoir in my fingertips as I midwife this unfurling and diving into the abyss.I live my Truth in every moment; I am Remembering as I go.
This occurs while exploring the fractals and chambers of my wild heart. Breaking to become. Shattering willingly. Embracing my darkness and remembering the light.I believe in the power of long hair flying, my shakti hip sway, black clothes all day every day, a pair of ridiculously large earrings, and juicy lip gloss.My passions are (in no particular order, simultaneously when possible) deep red wine at 5pm sharp, soul sex with my beloved, goddess baths, loving people exactly as they are, reveling in every sacred and mundane second of my days, sage and sweetgrass burning, channeling my Muse, running at warp speed towards our evolution, Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo, dancing whilst kitchen witching, rebirthing from the Phoenix Fire, worshipping and howling at the moon, my third eye to Grandmother Tree, hunting down bodies of water to sink into, (if that's not possible, i do my Oracle Dishes) thunderstorms and lightning, forehead to the ground, allowing the Medicine of our Mama Earth to guide me Home.